Turkey: Oldest Christian monastery at risk

After high court rules against monks

(ANSAmed) - ANKARA, JULY 12 - The Mongolians failed to
destroy it 700 years ago despite the massacre of 40 friars and
400 Christians. Yet the existence of the oldest functioning
Christian monastery in the world, the fifth century Mor Gabriel
Monastery in the Tur Abdin plane (the mountain of God's
servants) near the Turkish-Syrian border, is at risk after a
ruling by Turkey's highest appeals court in Ankara.

Founded in 397 by the monks Samuel and Simon, Mor Gabriel in
eastern Anatolia has been the heart of the Orthodox Syrian
community for centuries. Syriacs hail from a branch of Middle
Eastern Christianity and are one of the oldest communities in
Turkey.

Today the monastery is inhabited by Mor Timotheus Samuel
Aktash, 3 monks, 11 nuns and 35 boys who are learning the
monastery's teachings, the ancient Aramaic language spoken by
Jesus and the Orthodox Syriac tradition.

Although the monastery is situated in an area at the centre
of conflicts between Kurdish separatist with the armed PKK group
and the Turkish army, Mor Gabriel welcomes 20,000 pilgrims every
year.

The Syriac Orthodox community - estimated to be 2.5 million
across the world - is under the authority of the Patriarch of
Antioch and considers the monastery a 'second Jerusalem'.

The monastery's reputation 1500 years ago was such that Roman
Emperors Arcadius, Theodosius and Onorio built new buildings
around it and enriched it with art and mosaics. But in the past
150 years Mor Gabriel has gone through a decline after the
massacres of Christians by nationalists at the end of the 19th
century - 3,000 Christians were burnt to death in Edessa's
Cathedral in 1895 - and clashes between Turks and Kurds in the
area during World War I.

In the mid 1960s the community in Tur Abdin numbered 130,000.

Today only 3,500 people are left and the 'second Jerusalem' is
in danger. The heads of the three neighbouring Muslim villages,
Kurds with the Belebi tribe, filed a lawsuit against the
monastery years ago with the support of an MP member of the
Islamic Justice and Development Party (AKP) of Prime Minister
Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

Under the lawsuit, the Syriacs are accused of practicing
'anti-Turkish activities' by providing an education to young
people, including non Christians, and of illegally occupying
land which belongs to the neighbouring villages.

After a number of contrasting verdicts, the highest appeals
court in Ankara, which is close to the government, has ruled in
favour of the village chiefs and said the land which has been
part of the monastery for 1,600 years is not its property,
Turkish newspaper Zaman reported.

The lawsuit also claimed that the sanctuary was built over
the ruins of a mosque, forgetting that Mohammed was born 170
years after its foundation.

The verdict has been slammed by the Turkish media and Zaman
wrote that the judges had 'lost' property and fiscal documents
'proving that the land in question belongs to the monastery'.

Mor Gabriel now needs to appeal to the European Court of
Human Rights in order to survive, a move already undertaken with
success a few years ago by the Greek Patriarch of Constantinople
to re-obtain the building housing the Orthodox orphanage of
Buyukada in Istanbul. (ANSAmed).